Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Cremation Remains

The remains left behind by cremation would correspond to about 5 % of the corpses’ non-decomposed weight and 6 to 8 % of the wood weight, according to Mattogno, Graf & Kues.[232] With the exaggerated corpse weights and enormous amounts of wood they claim (see section 8.3), this allows them to argue that the volume of ash (assuming specific weights of 0.5 g/cm³ for human ash and 0.34 g/cm³ for wood ash) would, in some camps at least, have exceeded the established or estimated volume of the mass graves.[233] With the more realistic corpse and wood weights explained in section 8.3, on the other hand, the problems that Mattogno and his colleagues make so much of become rather insignificant, as shown in Tables 8.37 and 8.38 below.[234] The average portion of the grave volume occupied by human and wood ashes is about 10 % in Table 8.37 and 12 % in Table 8.38, Belzec being the camp with the highest density of buried ashes (16 % respectively 19 %).

One should however bear in mind the possibility that the residue percentages considered in the above tables are too low, because combustion on the extermination camp pyres was not necessarily as complete as would correspond to such residues and there are also data from open-air carcass cremation pointing to higher amounts of residue.

Table 8.37

Table 8.38

According to a document from the British Environment Agency (EA) referred to by MGK[235], a typical pyre for 300 cows at the time of the British Foot & Mouth Disease Crisis in 2001 included 175 tons of coal, 380 railway sleepers, 250 pallets, four tons of straw and 2,250 liters of diesel. Such a pyre could leave 15 tons of carcass ash and 45 tons of other ash to be disposed of. Assuming that each cow weighed 500 kg[236], the original carcass weight was 150 tons, i.e. the carcass ash amounted to 10 % of the original weight. The other ash amounted to 300 kg for each ton of carcass burned.

Table 8.39 contains a calculation of the presumable original weights per ton of carcass of the substances used for burning the carcasses[237] and the corresponding residue after cremation.[238] The wood equivalent of the coal, straw and wood used for cremation was calculated on hand of each substance’s heating value in BTU[239], in order to establish the weight of wood residue, calculated as the weight of wood residue that would accrue if all flammables left the same amount of residue (which is unrealistic insofar as coal leaves a higher percentage of residue than wood when combusting). The diesel oil was left out of the calculation as its residue is assumed to be negligible.

Table 8.39

The weight of ash other than carcass ash per ton of carcass burned is 191 kg in the above table, 109 kg short of the 300 kg per ton of carcass reportedly left by a typical pyre according to the EA. So if the EA’s data are accurate, the residue left by the coal, straw and wood burned must have been somewhat higher than considered in Table 8.39. In the next table (8.40), the assumed residue ratio for these substances is multiplied by a factor so as to yield 300 kg per carcass, raising the coal residue ratio from 0.13 to 0.20 and the wood and straw residue ratio from 0.10 to 0.16.

Table 8.40

Dividing the 300 kg of other-than-carcass ash by the 2,137 kg of wood corresponding to the flammables (except the residue-neutral diesel) used per ton of carcass in these pyres yields a theoretical wood residue factor of ca. 0.14, vs. a carcass residue factor of 0.10.

As mentioned in section 2 of this chapter[240], MGK tried to use IAEA guidelines for carcass burning[241] to support the wood-to-carcass weight ratio that underlies their wood requirement calculations, conveniently omitting the fact that the ash figure given by Mercer et al, 350 kg per ton of animal, is not just carcass and wood ash but also includes coal ash. In Table 8.41 below the exercise done in Table 8.39 is repeated considering Mercer et al’s figures for amounts of external flammables and total amount of residue.[242] One can see that the residue weight per ton of carcass calculated with the same assumptions (317 kg including the carcass ash, 217 kg without it) falls short of the 350 kg mentioned by Mercer et al.

Table 8.41

As Mercer et al – unlike the EA – give no separate weight for the carcass ash; their total residue weight of 350 kg can be reached in two ways: by leaving the carcass residue unaltered and assuming a higher amount of coal and other ash (Table 8.42) or by assuming a higher carcass residue (Table 8.43).

The calculated wood residue factor is 0.13 in Table 8.42 and 0.11 in Table 8.43, whereas the corpse residue factor is 0.10 in the former and 0.133 in the latter.

Table 8.42

Table 8.43

The calculations in Tables 8.42 and 8.43 incidentally show that the amount of residue stated by Mercer et al is compatible with the author’s earlier wood equivalent calculations based on their article[243], which yield a wood-to-carcass weight ratio of about 2:1, rather than with MGK’s conveniently oversimplified calculations mentioned in section 2 yielding their desired, much higher ratio.[244]

The residue factors for carcass ash and wood ash from Tables 8.40, 8.42 and 8.43 were applied to calculate the amounts of cremation remains at the extermination camps, instead of the lower residue factors considered in Tables 8.37 and 8.38. The results of this exercise are shown in Tables 8.44 and 8.45 below.

Table 8.44

Table 8.45

The concentration of ash would be considerably lower if the burning was carried out mainly using flammable liquids rather than wood, in which case cremation remains would mostly be of human origin. There is evidence that this was indeed the case. At Treblinka, according to Judge Łukaszkiewicz' protocol dated December 29, 1945, examination by an expert in forensic medicine of the ashes spread across an area of about 2 hectares together with bones, skulls and other human remains revealed that "the ashes are without any doubt of human origin (remains of cremated human bones)."[245]At Belzec, coroner Dr. Pietraszkiewicz found that the ash he examined was predominantly of human origin and only a small part came from wood.[246]

Even if substantial amounts of wood were used, on the other hand, the density of cremation remains in the mass graves must have been lower at the time of the camps’ dismantling than results from the above calculations, because cremation remains were not always returned to the burial pits. At Sobibor ashes from the cremated bodies were used as fertilizer for vegetable plots, mixed with sand and spread out across the soil, or taken out of the camp area.[247] Regarding Treblinka there is evidence that cremation remains were not always buried in the emptied mass graves but also moved outside the camp area (see section 1 of this chapter). Also at Chełmno part of the cremation remains was not buried in the mass graves or elsewhere on site.[248] Regarding Belzec, the scattering of ashes in fields and woods near the camp is mentioned by at least one witness.[249]

After the Soviet army reached the camp areas – or even before that, as suggested by the mention of ashes covering a large part of the camp area in the Soviet investigation report about Treblinka dated August 24, 1944[250] -, robbery diggers brought further cremation remains to the surface. The effects of their activity at Belzec were described as follows by Prof. Andrzej Kola:

One can suppose that the ashes filled the pits completely, and only a very thin layer of surface soil was used as a cover. Therefore during the camp closing in 1943 year and leveling works taken up at that time, as well as robbery digs around the camp area directly after the war, the most part of body ashes was placed over the surface, and even now the presence of burnt bodies' traces is quite clear in the surface structures, particularly in the western and northern part of the camp. In those very parts the zone of graves was located.[251]

These facts make it somewhat-less-than-relevant to argue that the concentration of cremation remains found in archaeological investigations of mass graves is lower than would correspond to human cremation on the evidenced scale, but Carlo Mattogno nevertheless indulged in this exercise regarding Belzec and Chełmno.

In his Belzec book Mattogno claimed that "the graphs of the analyses of the 137 drill cores presented by Kola show that the ash in the graves is normally intermingled with sand, that in more than half of the samples the layer of ash and sand is extremely thin", and that furthermore "out of the 236 samples, 99 are irrelevant, and among the 137 relevant ones more than half show only a very thin layer of sand and ash, whereas among the remainder the percentage of sand is not less than 50%, and the thickness of the sand/ash layer varies greatly."[252]However, he never undertook to explain how he had managed to determine, on hand of the schematic representations of core samples in Kola’s book[253], how high the ash content detected in each of the samples shown was. Instead he claimed that the cover layer of the Belzec mass graves after they were refilled with sand and cremation remains must have been two meters thick and therefore, according to his calculations about the area of the Belzec mass graves identified by Kola, more than half of the mass graves’ volume would have been occupied by soil not mixed with cremation remains (the cover layer) whereas the layer below the cover would have mostly or almost exclusively consisted of such remains. Such concentration of cremation remains in the lower half of the mass graves, in turn, would be incompatible with Kola’s finds which, as Mattogno claimed without substantiation, suggest moderate to modest rather than high concentrations of cremation remains in the mass graves.[254] Mattogno’s claim about the thickness of the cover layer – based on the author’s quote of what Arad wrote about that layer at Treblinka, not Belzec – is belied by the report about the excavations at Belzec directed by judge Godzieszewski’s on October 12, 1945, according to which there were layers of cremation remains well above two meters below ground, which cannot have been the result of robbery digging alone.[255] An originally thin cover layer of sand was also the conclusion of Kola (see above quote), whose findings about a resulting noticeable presence of human cremation remains above ground throughout the Belzec site Mattogno challenged by amusingly claiming that he and Graf had seen no such traces when they visited the site in 1997.[256] This argumentation, on the other hand, didn’t keep Mattogno from invoking the scattering of cremation remains throughout a large part of the camp area, as described by eyewitness Stanislaw Kozak, to call in question the accuracy of Kola’s conclusions regarding the area and volume of the mass graves.[257] Like other Revisionists, Mattogno has no problem with arguing on both sides of his mouth.

Regarding Chełmno, Mattogno claims that the cremation of 145,000 corpses would have left 326 tons of human ashes occupying a volume of 652 cubic meters, assuming a corpse mass weight of 6,525 tons and a corpse residue factor of 5 % [258](the same as in Tables 8.37 and 8.38). Assuming the highest carcass residue factor considered above (13.3 %, Table 8.43) and the weight of the ca. 150,000 corpses from Chelmno’s 1st phase according to Table 8.21, the amount of human cremation remains would be the following: [(3,321,706x0.133)÷1,000 =] 441.79 tons of ash weight, corresponding to 441.79 ÷ 0.5 = 883.58 m³ of ash. The four Chełmno mass graves in which corpses were buried had an estimated total volume of 16,179 cubic meters[259], which means that if the corpse’s cremation remains had been wholly returned to the mass graves they would have occupied no more than 5.46 % of the graves’ volume. Even if this mass of human cremation remains had been dumped only into the 11 pits called the "fifth grave" in Pawlicka-Nowak’s online article, with an assumed total volume of 4,096 cubic meters[260], they would have occupied no more than (883.58÷4,096 =) 21.57 % of these pits’ volume. This was not so, however, for human cremation remains were also found in the former burial graves as well as in the objects called "field crematoria" in Pawlicka-Nowak’s article, and besides not all cremation remains were disposed of inside the camp area, as mentioned above.

Oblivious of the fact that one should thus not necessarily expect to find human cremation remains in high concentrations in the Chełmno mass graves, ash pits and cremation structures, Mattogno triumphantly announces that a 1988 examination of soil samples containing human ashes revealed a human ash concentration of just "some percent" in these samples.[261] And he further disgraces himself by speculating that these samples must have come from the ash disposal pits making up the "fifth grave". Apparently Mattogno "forgot" that these pits (in which the soil was found to contain "a significant mixture of burn waste and crushed human bones"[262]) were not subject to archaeological investigation before 2003/04 and soil samples examined in 1988 are thus not likely to have been from these pits.

As concerns Sobibor, MGK reduce the amount of cremation remains in that camp’s mass graves by creatively interpreting their translation of Kola’s descriptions of these graves. Kola’s translated statement that "Particularly noticeable traces of cremation occurred in the lower parts of the graves where distinct layers of scorched bones, with a thickness up to 40-60 cm, could be identified" is first decried as contradicting the archaeologist’s description whereby the lower parts of graves nos. 3, 4, 5 and 6 contained not cremation remains but corpses in wax-fat transformation (apparently it didn’t occur to these keen text analysts that Kola, as the context of his quoted statement suggests, is likely to have meant the lower layers of cremation remains in graves nos. 1 and 2, which he considered to have been used for cremation only, and the layers closest to the corpse layers in the other graves, which after all were up to 5.80 meters deep). Then MGK swiftly convert Kola’s "particularly noticeable" traces of cremation into the only such traces that were found in the Sobibor mass graves, further ignore that Kola said nothing about how many "particularly noticeable" layers of cremation remains were in the lower parts of the graves, and postulate that each mass grave contained only one layer of cremation remains, which they generously assume to be 50 cm thick. Considering the graves’ area of 3,210 m², this would mean "(3,210×0.5=) 1,605 m3, equal to (1,605×0.4=) 642 tons, corresponding to about 34,500 corpses."[263]

Apart from being based on a conveniently creative text interpretation, these calculations (which MGK furthermore proclaim to be a "somewhat unrealistic hypothesis", without explaining why) don’t help their case, especially if one considers the cremation residue calculations in Tables 8.37 and 8.38, which are based on corpse and wood weight assumptions more realistic than those of MGK. For 1,605 m³ of corpse and wood ash is not far below the amounts calculated in these tables as corresponding to the corpses of all Sobibor victims - 1,642 to 1,992 cubic meters. And it is quite possible that, as established by coroner Dr. Pietraszkiewicz at Belzec, and as must have been the case on the Dresden Altmarkt considering the rather small amounts of wood one sees under the grate in Image 8.5, cremation ashes are predominantly of human origin also at Sobibor.

[232]M&G, Treblinka, p.150; Mattogno, Bełżec, pp.86 f.; MGK, Sobibór, p.148. On p.136 of the Sobibor book MGK refer to a source (http://hubcap.clemson.edu/~blpprt/bestwoodash.html) according to which the burning of wood results in about 6-10 % ashes on average. Having assumed the use of fresh wood for their Sobibor calculations of wood requirements, MGK generously assume the lower value "because it is fresh wood, very rich in water" (p.148).

[234]The former table uses the amounts of dry wood per corpses from Table 8.22, the latter the fresh wood amounts from Table 8.23. The wood weight percentage of cremation residue considered is 8 % for dry wood and 6 % for fresh wood. The volume calculations from the weight of residues are based on the data about the specific weight of human and wood ashes provided by Mattogno. Regarding the grave volume figures for Belzec, Sobibor and Chełmno in column 10 see Chapter 7. The Sobibor volume is the volume of graves nos. 1 to 6 corrected for sloping (12,746.50 m³) plus the volume of the small pit called grave # 7, which had an area of 30 m² and a depth of 0.90 meters, thus a volume of 27 m³ (no correction for sloping required due to the low depth). The grave volume considered for Treblinka is the volume required to bury 721,555 at a density of 12 corpses per cubic meter (Chapter 7).

[237] Sleepers: the larger of the two types of new oak railway sleepers sold by the company Timber2you advertising under http://www.limelandscapes.com/ weighs 80 kg and has a volume of 2.4 x 0.225 x 0.125 = 0.0675 cubic meters. A European railway sleeper, as considered for the wood equivalent calculations in Muehlenkamp, ‘Belzec Research 4 (2)’, has a higher volume (0.0975 m³) and is assumed to have a correspondingly higher weight. 380 such sleepers are held to weigh (380x80x0.0975÷0.0675) = 43.911 kg. Pallet: wood pallets sold by the company ULINE advertising under http://www.uline.com/BL_8201/Wood-Pallets, weigh up to 100 lbs = 45.36 kg; 250 pallets would thus weigh 11,340 kg.

[247] Schelvis, Sobibor, p.112. Inmate witness Jakob Biskobicz mentioned having been ordered by SS-officer Wagner to scatter human ash from the extermination area in the Sobibor vegetable yard (deposition in Tel Aviv on 06.06.1962, translation to German in BAL B162/208 AR-Z 251/59, Bd. VII, f. 1471 ff. (f.1479). According to inmate witness Kurt Thomas, ash was loaded into barrels and sent to Germany as fertilizer or mixed with unburned coal and dirt and then scattered on the camp’s roads (letter to the Jewish World Congress dd. 3.12.1961, translation to German in BAL B162/208 AR-Z 251/59, Bd. V, f.1024 ff., f.1044). Bystander witness Bronislaw Lobejko reported having learned from Ukrainian guards that the human ash was mixed with gravel (Schotter) from locomotives (?) and scattered upon the camp’s roads and paths, whereas unburned bones were crushed by Jewish inmates with hammers and then mixed with grit (Kies) – see Lobejko’s deposition before judge Zielinski in Olesnica on 08.01.1946, as note 23. According to bystander witness Jan Piwonski, the corpse’s ashes were taken out of the camp by train (deposition in Chelm on 10.11.1945, translation from Polish to German in StA.Do Sob 85 PM III NO 109, p.5 of the interrogation protocol).

[249] Report of Rudolf Reder regarding Belzec – BAL B162/208 AR-Z 252/59 Bd. II, p.258 ff. (p.286). Reder refers to conversations he had with local inhabitants after the area was occupied by the Soviet army.